An article published in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend drew parallels from Operation Rising Lion to Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s. “That war really looms large in terms of the entire way in which they see themselves under siege, permanently under threat,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert at Johns Hopkins University and author of Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History. “The mindset of the country now is that it dodged a bullet and that it still has to contend with a long-term danger.” “They know that they can survive a total war that lasts a long time,” said Afshon Ostovar, an Iran military expert and associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. “They know they can tolerate a lot more than maybe the Israelis can tolerate.” The Iran-Iraq War erupted in 1980, just a year after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched an invasion to exploit Iran’s political upheaval and seize oil-rich border territories. Over the next eight years, the conflict became one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century, killing hundreds of thousands on both sides. Saddam’s forces used chemical weapons and targeted Iranian oil infrastructure but failed to capture major oil fields. Iran’s then-President, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, oversaw the war effort. In 1982, Iran suffered a devastating blow during a failed operation to seize the southern Iraqi city of Basra, incurring tens of thousands of casualties and revealing its military weakness. Early in the war, Iran tried to reconstitute its air force by releasing jailed U.S.-trained pilots who had served under the Shah. However, they soon ran out of spare parts for American-made jets like the F-14, and the US, now their enemy, refused to resupply them. Much of its air fleet was grounded, giving Iraq a significant advantage. Though the war ended inconclusively in 1988, Iran declared victory and drew lasting strategic lessons. Determined never again to depend on foreign arms, Tehran began developing its own ballistic missiles and drones, expanded its nuclear program, and built a network of regional militias to deter threats, especially from Israel. “The Islamic Revolution gave the ideology, but the national security establishment, the national security mindset, came out of the Iran-Iraq war,” Nasr, of Johns Hopkins, said. The embrace of missiles and other asymmetric weaponry was designed to head off the sort of war of attrition Iran faced against Iraq, which quickly sapped Iran’s military resources and manpower, analysts said. “Iran became very sensitive to losses after the Iran-Iraq war,” said Ostovar from the Naval Postgraduate School. “Politically, it was a huge deal. So they built up this deterrence matrix.” However, as Iran built its missile arsenal, the cruel regime failed to acquire sufficient air defenses to protect its citizens. During the Israeli attacks, there were no warning sirens or shelters to run to. “They’ve come away with an overinflated view of what the achievement in the Iran-Iraq war means for the future,” Ansari said. “They haven’t really understood what the impact of a proper air war would be.” And of course, Iran’s proxies, except for the Houthis, have long been decimated. “Iran is left with no deterrence and with a military that was not designed to really fight a conventional war,” Ostovar said. “The only thing that […]